Annoyance...

[gemini06720]

Steve,

I have decided to connect my old La Crosse WS2310 weather station to Cumulus (for an experiment I am working on).

What really annoyed me was, when I entered the wrong serial port number ... and Cumulus just froze!

A better approach/solution would be for Cumulus to try getting the information from which ever input (ie: serial port number, USB or TCP/IP) for a minute or two, at the most, and then give up with a no connection error message - if that timing loop is already part of Cumulus, then its waiting time should be drastically reduced.

I kept Cumulus waiting for almost 5 minutes without any message indicating that Cumulus could not connect to the serial port number I had entered. I eventually had to force-closed Cumulus and edit the 'cumulus.ini' file as it had been corrupted - indeed, even if access to the newly entered serial port number had not been successful, that serial port number had already been saved into the 'cumulus.ini' file - the new input choice (ie: serial port number, USB or TCP/IP) should only be saved into the 'cumulus.ini' upon successful connection...

[steve]

If you enter a non-existant port, Cumulus just gives an error after a few seconds. The problem occurs if you enter a port which exists and can be opened successfully. Cumulus then tries to talk to the station and hangs. I don't understand why, because all of the calls should time out. I'll see if I can find out what's happening and do something about it. Was the 'please wait' window open?

[gemini06720]

Steve I have just reproduced the problem... I have selected the La Crosse WS2300 weather station, selected COM Port 3 (which exist but has nothing connected to it), and selected the serial for the VP type. A window opens with the "Please wait' message at the top and then nothing ... Cumulus has locked...

A similar situation has happened in the past but I passed it as being an anomaly with my communications ports.

I started replying to this message after placing Cumulus into a frozen state ... and 7 minutes later, Cumulus is still trying something, and, if I click on the Cumulus window I am told that Cumulus is not responding. I thus have to click a couple of times on the close button (the top right side 'X') to eventually close Cumulus...

If you want me to try something else to help you get to the bottom of the problem, please let me know...

[steve]

I can reproduce the problem here. I don't know what's causing it, though, because Cumulus doesn't actually appear to be trying to talk to the station at the point where it hangs.

[gemini06720]

Steve, what is happening (the little problem situation) can be 'very annoying' and quite 'unnerving' for most average (ie: most of Cumulus) users...

I know/knew how to deal with the situation quickly (well, I am not an average user anymore)...

But most users will not know what to do in a situation like that, should they wait and how long should they wait, should they simply click on the close button or, god forbid, should they use the 'Ctrl-Alt-Del' key combination to close Cumulus???

Obviously, something somewhere is keeping Cumulus in a 'stasis' state for (what appear) a very long time (personally, I cannot wait very long when a program freeze - if there is no response within a few seconds then it is 'force-shut-down' with the task manager, but, that is me )...